“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”

―Philip Freneau

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Unveiling the University Discourse

The Wrong Approach

Comedy is thus the very opposite of shame: shame endeavors to maintain the veil, while comedy relies on the gesture of unveiling. More closely, the comic effect proper occurs when, after the act of unveiling, one confronts the ridicule and the nullity of the unveiled content—in contrast to encountering behind the veil the terrifying Thing too traumatic for our gaze.

- Slavoj Zizek, "The Christian-Hegelian Comedy"

The Right Approach

Unveils the "why" they're politically correct. "Why?", to gain personal advantages which accompany the perception of possession of or the University's alliance with "*Power," of course (the source of ALL it's so-called "authority").

* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

5 comments:

Makes a good point, of course, but the satire is too heavy-handed and redundant to sustain interest for long. I watched it all out of courtesy to you, Farmer, but I couldn't laugh at it. I only felt vaguely depressed.

But YES, the condition illustrated IS pretty much what American "education, " so-called has become.

You know what forces I blame –– and why –– but I won't belabor it. Suffice it to say when "The Crowd" is subjected to Perpetual Displays of Perverse, Illogical assertions expertly calculated to undermine the strength of the nation and its people, reaping a bitter harvest becomes inevitable.

When evil elements use "Freedom of Speech" to OBLITERATE Freedom of Speech, Thought and Action, it's time to proceed against the Evil Elements by doing to "THEM" EXACTLY what they have done to "US." In other words we must mock, scorn, deride, berate, humiliate, intimidate, and ceaselessly defame then and everything they stand for. In other words we must BEAT THEM at THEIR OWN ROTTEN GAME.

They are DEMON BASTARDS nothing more, nothing less, and as such they must be brought low –– certainly not "KILLED" just thoroughly DISCREDITED and put in their place.

There is perhaps little reason to be optimistic about the above analysis. True, the Dixiecrat-GOP coalition is the weakest point in the dominating complex of corporate, military and political power. But the civil rights and peace and student movements are too poor and socially slighted, and the labor movement too quiescent, to be counted with enthusiasm. From where else can power and vision be summoned? We believe that the universities are an overlooked seat of influence.

First, the university is located in a permanent position of social influence. Its educational function makes it indispensable and automatically makes it a crucial institution in the formation of social attitudes. Second, in an unbelievably complicated world, it is the central institution for organizing, evaluating, and transmitting knowledge. Third, the extent to which academic resources presently is used to buttress immoral social practice is revealed first, by the extent to which defense contracts make the universities engineers of the arms race. Too, the use of modern social science as a manipulative tool reveals itself in the "human relations" consultants to the modern corporation, who introduce trivial sops to give laborers feelings of "participation" or "belonging", while actually deluding them in order to further exploit their labor. And, of course, the use of motivational research is already infamous as a manipulative aspect of American politics. But these social uses of the universities' resources also demonstrate the unchangeable reliance by men of power on the men and storehouses of knowledge: this makes the university functionally tied to society in new ways, revealing new potentialities, new levers for change. Fourth, the university is the only mainstream institution that is open to participation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint.

These, at least, are facts, no matter how dull the teaching, how paternalistic the rules, how irrelevant the research that goes on. Social relevance, the accessibility to knowledge, and internal openness

these together make the university a potential base and agency in a movement of social change.

1. Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.

2. A new left must be distributed in significant social roles throughout the country. The universities are distributed in such a manner.

3. A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the postwar world, and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. The university is an obvious beginning point.

4. A new left must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.

5. A new left must start controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be reversed. The ideal university is a community of controversy, within itself and in its effects on communities beyond.

6. A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

But we need not indulge in allusions: the university system cannot complete a movement of ordinary people making demands for a better life. From its schools and colleges across the nation, a militant left might awaken its allies, and by beginning the process towards peace, civil rights, and labor struggles, reinsert theory and idealism where too often reign confusion and political barter. The power of students and faculty united is not only potential; it has shown its actuality in the South, and in the reform movements of the North.

The bridge to political power, though, will be built through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and internationally, between a new left of young people, and an awakening community of allies. In each community we must look within the university and act with confidence that we can be powerful, but we must look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice.

To turn these possibilities into realities will involve national efforts at university reform by an alliance of students and faculty. They must wrest control of the educational process from the administrative bureaucracy. They must make fraternal and functional contact with allies in labor, civil rights, and other liberal forces outside the campus. They must import major public issues into the curriculum -- research and teaching on problems of war and peace is an outstanding example. They must make debate and controversy, not dull pedantic cant, the common style for educational life. They must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power.

As students, for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program is campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.

"We can never be sure that the opinion we wish to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."

~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

That might have been true in Mills' time and place, but neither he nor any of his contemporaries had to cope with Marxism, Hitlerism, or Islamism, did they?

Therefore, I disagree with Mills. Think how much cleaner, safer, more pleasant, prosperous and good-natured the world would be today if we had been able to silence those forces before they developed much of a following.

________ CAPSULE HISTORY ________

Plato and Socrates, also HippocratesReally gave Civilization a boost.Then, the cruel Romans, Machines and the GermansMarx, Freud and Split Atoms its prospects reduced!

Links

On Redemption

To redeem the past and to transform every ‘It was’ into an ‘I willed it thus!’ – that alone I call redemption!

Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

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Andrei Tarkovsky

“We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means... I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it’s a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it."